Tone Valley Partnership

In 2016 the Headteachers and Chairs of the Governing Bodies at Kingsmead School and local Primary Schools for Cotford St Luke, Milverton, Lydeard St Lawrence, Oake Bradford & Nynehead and Wiveliscombe signed a charter of collaboration between the schools as part of The Tone Valley Partnership (TVP).

"Our joint vision is to provide the best possible and most rewarding education for all children as they progress through our schools. This will improve their life chances by delivering improved results, greater security and broader horizons for all children within the partnership through strong collaboration and commitment to joint endeavour."

Chair of the group Richard Stead, Headteacher at Milverton Primary School

Charter of collaboration between schools in The Tone Valley Partnership

Our joint vision is toprovide the best possible and most rewarding education for all children and young people in the collaboration as they progress through our schools. This will improve their life chances by delivering improved results (academic and non-academic), offer broader horizons to all and enable them to make sustainable life choices.

Schools will maintain their individual ethos, identity, vision and values as a commitment to meeting the diverse needs of our children and young people and their families.

This charter underpins the working practices of each and every member of our schools. It is not intended to be prescriptive of individual practice in our schools.

Through strong collaboration and commitment to endeavours from all schools within the partnership, we will:

Develop a culture of cooperation, commitment and peer support in all we do

Be open and transparent in all our school-to-school relationships, including with and between our governing bodies.*

Be fully committed to joint practice development

Contribute to strategic planning for the personal and educational success of all children and young people in our schools

Provide a common rich experience of learning with a secure learning journey from early years in to post 16 education and on to the workplace

Collaborate in the development of the future leaders within our schools and the community

Create a clear accountability structure *

Endeavour to ensure that provision of education is sustainable through: succession planning; adaptability; capacity planning; horizon scanning; building partnerships beyond the Tone Valley Partnership and fostering support from parents and the wider community

Ensure challenge is constructive, set within a supportive environment and is at the heart of everything we do

All schools will:

Implement whole-cluster action plans in their own setting and report on this work*

Enable colleagues and governors to work together across schools and share accountability structures as they exist in each of our schools

Practice and innovation across our schools to provide high quality development opportunities for all including: involvement in curriculum development 5 -16; developing pedagogic practice; greater opportunities to lead learning across a broader platform; greater middle leadership opportunities across a broader platform; working cross-school and cross-phase and development of coaching models

Help and support each other on our journeys of continuous improvement

Work hard to overcome barriers that might impede our progress

We will know we are successful when our children and young people are reaching their full potential in academic and personal development. To assist in judging success we will:

Regularly and robustly monitor and evaluate our work and outcomes and the successes of our children and young people in its many and varied forms

Establish clear protocols including peer to peer and school to school review

Engage with external improvement partners to ensure that we are robustly challenged

Regularly evaluate our curriculum offers to share best practice and thereby ensure that we are each providing a relevant, accessible and broad education which is appropriate to the needs and aspirations of all our children and young people.

*In the future the accountability structure may include a partnership board which will need to emerge from the heads’ group and include governors. Representation should be equitable and based on number of schools rather than size of school.